Football

Over the past three years, 17 high school football players have died after sustaining head injuries while playing. A similar situation in the NFL would have caused a national uproar, so how has this been allowed to happen to our youth?

Take a look at trailer for this riveting episode of HBO’s series Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, which is airing several times on HBO through mid-December 2016, as well as On Demand. The episode as a whole explores why there are such inconsistencies in protecting professional athletes versus the youngest players.

The much-anticipated movie “Concussion” is scheduled for release this year on Christmas Day, and already there is Oscar Award talk for Will Smith, who plays the role of Dr. Bennet Omalu. It was Dr. Omalu who discovered the tragic progressive degenerative effects of years of multiple concussions in NFL players, which he named CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy).

Bennet Omalu, M.D., (L) and actor Will Smith attend the screening of the major motion film, “Concussion,” on November 23, 2015. (VALERIE MACON/AFP/Getty Images)

The film highlights the NFL’s initial response of anger and denial. Indeed, since Dr. Omalu’s discovery in 2002, the NFL has experienced lawsuits, exposés, and finger-pointing in general. Now, 13 years later, bystanders have watched the NFL’s reaction to this scientific research unfold in a manner not unlike many stages of grief – first denial, then anger, on to bargaining and, finally, acceptance. (Although, the League is still working on fully coming to terms with this last step.)

For their part, the NFL hasn’t had much reaction to the movie, preferring to keep the controversy at arm’s length. While Dr. Omalu has vocalized his opposition to children playing football until they are legally and emotionally old enough to understand the danger of putting their brains at risk, the NFL can’t afford to lose any of their reported $7+ billion in annual revenue.

Yet, while the debate rages on, two points are patently clear from years of scientific research: that children repeatedly hitting their heads during developmental years is potentially very harmful, and that college and professional football players can face significant health consequences from playing the sport.

But just how serious are families going to be about keeping their children from playing football? Indeed, this is just the beginning of the conversation about brain injuries.

As a community-based concussion clinic that has treated more than 30,000 traumatic brain injury patients over the past three years, HeadFirst Concussion Care has seen multiple reasons for why people sustain concussions. And while football is a violent sport, soccer, lacrosse and hockey also put our youth at risk for head trauma.

And again, this is just half of the dialogue. HeadFirst’s data shows that traumatic brain injuries sustained while playing organized sports with a concussion protocol in place (high school or college sports) account for a relatively small percentage of our patients. In fact, in as many as 80 percent of our patients, concussions are sustained by other mechanisms of injury. These include non-organized sports-related injuries (bike riding, skateboarding, trampolining, skiing, pick-up or other informal recreational games), slips and falls, motor vehicle accidents, and assaults.

The key message is that the people must understand that traumatic brain injuries can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Not just kids. Not just athletes. And certainly, not just NFL players. And since anyone is at risk, everyone must understand the proper protocols for healing an injured brain.

On a final note to end the year, my holiday wish is that families, schools, and employers begin to talk about head injuries and follow traumatic brain injury protocols to keep all children and adults safe.

One of the most common questions that I get from parents is “How well will my child’s helmet protect against concussion?”

The elusive answer appears to have been provided at the 2014 American Academy of Neurology’s annual meeting. In a study co-authored by Frank Conidi, MD, DO, MS, director of the Florida Center for Headache and Sports Neurology, Assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology at Florida State University College of Medicine, the standard drop test was modified to measure linear and rotational responses in crash test dummies to repeated 12 mile-per-hour impacts.

They found that helmets do protect the player from massive injuries like skull fractures in the range of 70 to 80 percent but provide little to no protection against concussion in the range of 10 to 15 percent.

Why is that? While the helmet does its job in disbursing the impact of a hard hit across the helmet to greatly reduce the risk of a skull fracture at one specific site, a helmet cannot stop the brain from shaking inside the skull, thus providing little to no protection against a concussion.

In fact, the team of scientists found that football helmets, on average, reduce the risk of traumatic brain injury by only 20 percent compared to not wearing a helmet. Added to these statistics, Conidi says, “Alarmingly, those that offered the least protection are among the most popular on the field.”

One of the best tools we have available is neurocognitive baseline testing. With the beginning of the school year upon us, please remember to get your child baseline tested. Headfirst Concussion Care offers free ImPACT® baseline testing. Please call 1-855-748-4868 (SIT-IT-OUT) or visit us online to arrange your child’s appointment.

Most of the globe is currently watching the World Cup and although football gets the lion’s share of the headlines about concussions, the June 19 soccer game between Uruguay and England is sure to land FIFA in some hot water. During the second half of the match, Álvaro Pereira, one of the stars of Uruguay’s national team, laid unconscious (below) on the field after taking a knee to the head. He fell to the turf and took at least 15 seconds before he showed any signs of consciousness.

Richard Heathcote / Getty Images

It was clear to everyone—the players, the referee, the TV commentators—that Pereira was unconscious. At this stage, there’s no further diagnosis necessary. You will often read that doctors disagree about when to diagnosis a concussion or mild traumatic brain injury but once there is a loss of consciousness all doctors agree that a concussion or mTBI has occurred.

Pereira should not have been let back onto the field. His coach, his team physician and the FIFA physician all should have stopped him. But Pereira insisted on returning to play for the remainder of the game over the objections of his team’s doctor, while FIFA doctors didn’t even examine him until after the game was over.

Sure, any player would be upset but irritability and mild aggression are normal responses following a head trauma. Pereira should have been lead off the field and if the team didn’t get him off the field, they should have been issued a yellow card.

FIFA needs to do more in terms of educating international coaches, players, fans, and their medical staff. Mr. Pereira was cleared an hour after the game by FIFA physicians as being apparently concussion free; no return to normal cognitive activity and no return-to-play protocols needed. That’s a red card!